What is surprising is, supposedly, the elephant is Thailand’s national animal. But, when you see how elephants are treated in Thailand, forced to carry people for hours on end on elephant treks, forced to work in tourist shows, or dragged through Bangkok’s incredibly polluted streets to the tourist areas where their mahoots make them beg for money, and you’d have a hard time wondering, if the elephant wasn’t Thailand’s national animal, how poorly it would be treated then.

The WWF now says the poaching of African elephants is at crisis levels and that much of the ivory hacked off the elephant as it lies dying is then sent to Thailand, Vietnam and China for use as decorative items. Rhinoceros horns are also cut off and used by Asians as a “cure” for cancer. (They don’t cure cancer, but that’s what happens when you are educated in a backward, third-world country — you believe idiocy like this).

They also blame Thailand for making the world illegal trade of ivory worse, because of an odd kind of Thai law that allows the trade of ivory that’s been cut from “domesticated elephants” – (guess it’s okay to make elephants dependent on you in Thailand, and then hack their tusks off? Sick indeed). They say, because of this law, illegal African ivory is being sold all over Thailand as there’s no possible way of telling if it’s from a Thai domesticated elephant or a wild African elephant.

The WWF, however, did give high scores to both India and Nepal, who they say have made huge inroads into stopping the illegal trade of tigers, rhinoceros, and elephants.

Honestly, there are just so many, many reasons to be embarrassed for Thailand, and all the illegal activity it accepts due to its huge levels of corruption and an abysmal education system. This is just one more of them.